Cbr16bingo Celestial (bingo) Cass Elliot was a rock star and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
Owen Elliot-Kugell is Cass Elliot’s daughter, orphaned at the age of 7 after Cass’s tragic and unexpected death in London in July of 1974. Now in her 50s, Owen has spent many years missing her mother and trying to learn as much about her as possible from those who knew her — family, friends and people who worked with her in the music business of the 1960s and early ‘70s. This memoir is not exactly a biography of Cass Elliot. It is Owen’s story of her quest to learn everything about Cass and about her own life before and after Cass’s death.
Cass Elliot was one of the members of The Mamas and The Papas, a folk group known for it stunning harmonies and hits like “California Dreaming” and “Monday Monday”. Owen, her only child, was born at the height of their fame. In the first part of the memoir, Owen gives a brief biography of her mother’s life from her birth in Baltimore until her death, after which Owen was raised by her maternal grandmother and aunt Leah. Thanks to her strong connection to her mother’s side of the family, Owen is able to relate interesting details about the “Cohen women.” Cass’s real name was Ellen Naomi Cohen, and she was raised in a hardworking middle class family. While her parents wanted her to go to college and medical school, Ellen/Cass dreamed of performing and moved to New York City. She eventually met Denny Doherty and through him met John and Michelle Phillips ~ The Mamas and The Papas. Owen believes that her mother’s strong Cohen family character was evident throughout this period of her life and helped her succeed. Cass had amazing talent, but she was a big woman in a world where a woman’s size matters. John Phillips did not want Cass in his group, and it seems clear that her size was the issue even though he made up some story later that her voice couldn’t hit proper ranges until she got hit on the head. Disparaging remarks and jokes about Cass’s size followed her everywhere. Cass’ reaction to this was to make jokes herself, to not show how much these comments hurt her. Owen writes also about her mother’s desire to have a romantic/life partner and a child, and the difficulties she faced there. Owen did not know who her biological father was until she was almost 20 years old. When Cass got pregnant, the man she was married to was a friend; they had married to prevent him going to Vietnam and he was not Owen’s father. According to Owen, Cass’s desire for a child was linked to her need to have someone in her life who would love and need her back. Owen’s recollections of her childhood indicate that Cass was a very loving mother. She was also a renowned hostess amongst the 1960s musical set in Los Angeles, with the likes of Eric Clapton and Joni Mitchell coming by to hang at their house. Cass seems to have had a talent for matching folks up musically, introducing John Sebastian to Zal Yanovsky (The Lovin’ Spoonful), and Stephen Stills and David Crosby to Graham Nash. When The Mamas and the Papas disbanded, Cass worked on a solo career and dabbled in television. She even subbed for Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show.
When Cass died — of a heart attack, not choking on a sandwich— she was performing an extended engagement in London. Owen ended up living with her aunt Leah and Leah’s husband Russ Kunkel (a famous session drummer) but also staying close to her grandmother. Owen talks about the trauma of losing her mother so young and the impact it had on the rest of her life. She switched around schools and spent time in therapy but childhood grief is not something that seems to have been addressed well anywhere in the 1970s. Owen, like her mother, enjoyed singing and performing, and given her mother’s connections, she knew lots of kids of performers in LA. She grew up with the girls in Wilson Phillips and it looked, briefly, as if Owen would have made a fourth in the group. Owen eventually met her husband Jake, who is also involved in the music industry. Seeing her mother inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame and making sure she got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame have meant a lot to Owen, who is dedicated to preserving her mother’s legacy.
I have to admit, I was much more interested in the parts about Cass than the rest of this story. I’d never heard of Owen before and it isn’t like she has had a career that would be familiar to the reader. I think that if she had spoken more to her childhood grief and the therapeutic interventions, it would have made for a better book. Much of what she relates about her childhood and school years is pretty dry reading, sort of a dull timeline of where she was with a few details thrown in. You don’t get a full sense of a meaningful personal journey, but you do sense Owen’s commitment to her mother’s memory and setting facts straight about how Cass lived, who she was, and how she died. It is terribly sad that she lost her lovely talented mother so young.